What You need to Know About Heartworms in Dogs

Heartworms in Dogs

What You need to Know

Heartworms can be a terrifying subject for many pet owners, that leaves you hugging your dog as you try to shake off the heebie jeebies. Heartworms are a parasite that lives inside dogs, residing in their heart, lungs, and blood vessels. Adult heartworms can grow up to a foot in length and cause some extensive damage inside your dog, including lung disease, heart failure and organ damage. The worst part about heartworms? Even though they can affect cats and even humans, dogs are their preferred choice for hosts, meaning your dogs can be susceptible to them. Here’s what you need to know about heartworms in dogs.

How is it Spread?

The typical means of transference is through a mosquito bite. Baby worms circulate through the blood and when an infected dog is bitten, that blood is now traveling via mosquito. If it then bites your dog, it increases the chances of your dog becoming infected by heartworms.

What are the Symptoms?

The big problem here is that it takes quite some time for the symptoms to make themselves known. Sometimes your dog can have heartworms and you won’t even know it for quite some time. The most common symptoms are:

Mild coughing

Reluctance to Exercise

Easily Fatigued

Loss of Appetite

Weight Loss

As the number of worms increase, these symptoms get progressively worse and lead to other issues.

What are the Chances My Dog can Become Infected?

The problem here is that all 50 states have some instances of heartworms, making it almost impossible to track down the exact factors that make your pet more or less likely to contract them. Humidity and higher instances of mosquitoes are certainly a factor but there’s much and more to consider.

What Do I need to Know about Testing?

Heartworms are a very serious disease that only get worse as time goes on. Like most other health conditions, the sooner it’s detected and dealt with, the better your dog’s chances are. Testing for heartworms, fortunately, is very simple. Vets take a small blood sample and test for the heartworm proteins which determines if your dog is sick or not.

What do I do if my Dog has Heartworms?

First, don’t panic. If you detect the heartworms early enough, there’s a very good chance that you can prevent future damage and get your dog on the path to recovery. It’s important during this time to restrict exercise, as that can cause more damage while the worms are still present. Your vet will help you come up with a plan to help kill the worms and get your dog healthy once again.

When Should I get my Dog Tested?

Annually is always the best course of action, even if your dog is on preventative medicines. This can be easy to work into routine visits and check ups and doesn’t take a lot of time.

When it comes to heartworms in dogs, catching it early is always the goal. Use monthly preventative medicines to keep your dog safe and check with your vet regularly to make sure that the medication is working. While it might seem like a hassle, your dog will thank you for it.

Born in Nova Scotia, I moved to the United States 20+ years ago.I am a dedicated lover of animals and fight for their rights and protection.I love people too, of course, and enjoy meeting folks from all walks of life.I enjoy philosophical discussion, laughing, and really odd ball stuff.I hope you enjoy my site.Leave me a comment to let me know you were here!Peace out.

Heartworms were not on my radar until last year because we don’t have them here. Yes, there have been a couple cases a year in Washington State but almost all of them can be attributed to traveling out of state.

However, it looks really scary and we DO travel out of state. I don’t want to give the dogs heartworm medication all year round but am considering it when we travel. Unfortunately, if you give a dog heartworm preventative and they do have them, it can kill them. Therefore you have to test a couple of times (before you give them preventative). At least it’s not expensive. I might go to testing 2 – 3 times a year during the fall, winter and early spring and giving them preventative in the summer when we travel a lot.

That all sounds like a wise thing to do, Jessica. Getting them tested would be an important thing, to begin with. It might not be a bad idea to give them preventatives in time for your travels. I was not actually aware that heartworm is not in certain states. Interesting. I hope it doesn’t spread there, like ticks have become more widespread. Safe travels!

Wow! This is a very informative article. I didn’t know that worms could affect dogs so badly. Thanks for sharing this. Now I know what to look out for to know if my dog may have worms or not. I wouldn’t want to lose my precious pet to heart worms.Keesha recently posted…Hey Girl You Thrivin? DFT Weight Management Technology

Jeanne Melanson is just an ordinary gal from Nova Scotia, now living in Michigan.

Her animal family has included 13 Alpine Goats, 40 Chickens, 20 Turkeys, 3 Vietnamese Pot Bellied Pigs, a number of Turtles, 2 Raccoons, 1 Opossum , her share of Cats and Dogs, and a Bearded Dragon named Shirley.